Policy Review, the magazine of the Heritage Foundation, has a contemporary new look, a partial name change, and a historic new mission: to restore the tradition of American citizenship by repairing the institutions of civil society and returning to the core political principles of our Founding Fathers.
Our new name is Policy Review. We'll be publishing six rather than four times a year. We will focus on the institutions of civil society -- families, communities, voluntary associations, churches and other religious organizations, business enterprises, public and private schools, local governments -- that are solving problems more effectively than large, centralized, bureaucratic government.
We think of our mission as "Applied Tocqueville," in honor of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who in 1832 wrote Democracy in America, still the best book about our country ever published. Tocqueville described an America that was the most democratic, most egalitarian, most religious, most prosperous, most charitable country on earth -- with limited national government and active citizen involvement in local government. It was an America of strong families and entrepreneurial business leadership, an America where voluntary associations of citizens were better than politicians in addressing the problems of their communities. Policy Review will study the success stories of institutions and civic leaders today who are carrying on this tradition.
We believe that the restoration of civil society is one of the most important challenges and opportunities facing conservatism over the next generation. Sixty years of liberalism have left America's social fabric in tatters. The family, the building block of a compassionate society, is collapsing. Crime is robbing America's poor of hope and killing opportunity in vast sections of our cities. Public education is preparing children neither for citizenship in a free society nor for competition in a 21st-century economy.
Big Government is not the solution to these catastrophes. But merely dismantling Big Government is not the answer, either. Conservatives must rebuild families, voluntary associations, local governments, and other institutions of civil society that will remedy the ills left untreated by failed liberal programs.
The return of political powers and responsibilities from Washington to smaller units of government will not automatically bring this about. Liberal ideas, interest groups, and bureaucratic structures are even more entrenched in statehouses and city halls than in the federal government. Nonprofit charities have been corrupted by a heavy dependence on government money. Many leading charities share the entitlement mentality of the welfare state and, as the United Way and New Era scandals suggest, are often less accountable than government.
Entirely new institutions will have to be created. Conservative public policies can erase the welfare state's incentives for family collapse, but they cannot put the family back together. Government cannot build and sustain healthy marriages, nor teach children to be hardworking, responsible, and virtuous. The family will be restored not by public policy but by private, character-building institutions that touch the souls of men and women and inspire them to be more responsible husbands, wives, and parents.
Lock-them-up policies in criminal justice are likewise necessary but insufficient to address the catastrophe of crime. The root cause of crime is spiritual, a hardening of the heart that makes a man or woman indifferent to the rights of others. The most effective institutions in criminal justice will therefore be those that create moral communities and transform individual attitudes and behaviors.
The second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century saw the creation of the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, YMCAs and YWCAs, and countless other voluntary organizations that strengthened character and addressed the failings of their communities. America is about to enter another such age, with conservatives at the lead. Policy Review will be at the forefront of this movement, chronicling its success stories and describing its challenges and opportunities.
We hope many liberals and centrists will join us in this adventure. Liberals who have learned from their mistakes of recent decades have a great deal of practical wisdom to offer conservatives who are trying to replace the welfare state. And conservatives will be most effective in the coming era of institution-building if we can harness the energy, idealism, imagination, and intelligence of liberals in our cause. Policy Review hopes to be a bridge between conservatives and liberals who are trying to renew the American experiment in self-government.
At the same time, we will make clear the differences between the conservative and liberal conceptions of civil society. Unlike liberals, who are mostly uncomfortable with religion, conservatives follow Tocqueville in seeing religious fervor as one of the most powerful forces for strengthening and sustaining civil society. We expect that many of the great institutions that will emerge over the next generation will be founded by churches, synagogues, mosques, and ecumenical associations of people of faith. Policy Review will feature a department, "One Nation Under God," that will describe how religious institutions are repairing America's social fabric.
We also see business as an essential ally of the citizenship movement. Liberals see nonprofit associations as morally superior to profitmaking businesses. Conservatives, by contrast, hold that the marketplace offers accountability and incentives for performance that are frequently missing from the nonprofit world. The most creative answers to social problems often come from businesses that can profit by solving them. A new column, "Blessings of Liberty," will show the contributions of economic freedom and marketplace competition to the regeneration of civil society.
Liberals who claim they want to promote civil society frequently use government regulation and judicial decisions to achieve the opposite. The Declaration of Independence accused King George III of a "long train of abuses and usurpations" that denied Americans their fundamental liberties. Policy Review will include a department, "Abuses and Usurpations," that will detail how federal and state executive branches, legislatures, and courts are interfering with civil society by denying its institutions the freedom to make basic decisions.
One of our most important departments, "Home Front," will provide news and information about organizations that are working to rebuild the family. While many liberals are belatedly recognizing the importance of strong families, liberal organizations such as the Children's Defense Fund still concentrate on securing government funds for single mothers and the social workers who serve them. Conservatives hold that children need loving families more than they need government money, and "Home Front" will profile the organizations that are doing the most to promote responsible parenthood.
Many other conservative organizations have dedicated themselves to advancing civil society. The Capital Research Center, the Manhattan Institute and its magazine City Journal, the Acton Institute, the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Hudson Institute, the Reason Foundation, World magazine, the Institute for Contemporary Studies, the New Citizenship Project, American Enterprise magazine, the Civil Society Project, Focus on the Family, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, and the Cato Institute are just a few of the organizations doing outstanding work in this area. Policy Review will report on their work, publish articles by their researchers, announce their upcoming conferences. Our goal is to build the American Citizenship movement into one of the most significant political and cultural movements of the next generation.
Why have we chosen the phrase "American citizenship" for this movement? Because these words combine freedom with responsibility. These are the two great themes of modern conservatism, and they build on the best of the American tradition. Freedom without responsibility cannot endure; responsibility without freedom cannot create. The great American experiment in self-government has survived for more than two centuries and created more opportunity for more people than any other political system because for most of our history we have emphasized both the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship.
As many observers now argue, this great experiment is at risk, and the restoration of American citizenship is now the most essential requirement for the renewal of American culture. Moreover, it is the most important unifying principle of conservatism in the post-Cold-War era. The principle appeals to libertarians with their emphasis on a free society of voluntary, nongovernmental institutions. It appeals to religious conservatives with their emphasis on faith and family and responsibility for the needy. It appeals to growth-and-opportunity conservatives who emphasize generosity and economic freedom. With its attention to the common obligations of citizenship, it appeals to nationalists who want to restore American patriotism and a strong sense of American cultural identity. And the restoration of American citizenship is an attractive principle for bringing liberals and centrists into the conservative fold.
The restoration of American citizenship will also bring our divided country together. Americans come from all races, all nationalities, all religions. We are united in citizenship not by common ancestry but by a common commitment to the political principles of the United States: the Constitution, the rule of law, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are united, too, by the common duties of citizenship: These have included the obligation to protect our country from foreign enemies, to take care of our own families, to participate actively in civic life, to assist our neighbors and communities when they are needy, and, in turn, not to take advantage of our neighbors' generosity when we can take care of ourselves.
Please join us in the historic mission of Policy Review. To the long-time readers of Policy Review, and especially to you who have been with us since our beginning 18 years ago, we say: Thank you for your support and encouragement, your letters, and your comments on our articles. You are our most important constituency. We believe you will thoroughly enjoy the newly designed magazine, and hope you will stay. Our new mission is based on what you have said you like most about the old Policy Review. We are determined to live up to your standards.
To our new readers, we say: Welcome aboard. We need your ideas, we need your enthusiasm, and we need your moral energy. Join us in the American citizenship movement, as we offer the analysis and stories that will help revive the spirit of American citizenship and work to ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
